Over in the Review Feedback a side discussion began on whether Super Mario Maker is a game. It just brought back memories of games from a then new really interesting company called EA. Games included Pinball Construction Set, Adventure Construction Set, and Racing Destruction Set. These came out around 1984 or 1985 on systems like the Apple II and Commodore 64. The Pinball Construction Set was receieved well, lots of fun, and Steve Wozniak was a huge fan. Racing Destruction was also a blast. Since you could write to floppy, you could probably share what you built too, although I have forgotten if I ever did that.

It really also illustrates a type of fun the Nintendos NES elected to ignore, and many NES fans probably missed out on. We have had this discusion in the why did the NES do so well in the US thread, and the NES stalwarts in general are a hard bunch to convince. Since its a timely topic, I will build on my argument on the larger variety of gaming joys the 8 Bit computers had over the NES.

Nice to see the construction set genre make a come back. Funny thats its by Nintendo and retro, as they could have done something like this long long ago. Its not a new or original idea either, and its borrowing decades old construction set innovation from EA of all people, but it does sound like fun.

Oh, my opinion is that its definately a game. Ptdebate points out some reasons, but even if it were just a level maker, I would still see it as a game. The game may be different, but a construction set is a game.

Ask yourself this have you ever enjoyed games were the primary past time was creating something?

IMHO based on all of your past reviews I don't think being creative has been your strong suit. There's nothing wrong with that but I don't think it's your passion outside of creating content for your website.

Critic, based on your reviews of 2D Mario games I think you would enjoy Mario Maker, you rated SMB1, SMB3, SMW, and NSMBU all highly and Mario Maker utilizes those four art styles for the level creator. It seems like you enjoy Nintendo-made levels in 2D Mario platformers but I don't know if you would enjoy levels the community makes, at least not all of them. The 100 Mario Challenge randomly pulls community-made levels for you to play based on the difficulty you choose. I'm not sure but I think it judges the difficulty by what percentage of players are completing the level, and you have to complete 16 of them with 100 lives to finish the challenge. I think the 100 Mario Challenge on Normal difficulty is fun because it provides a good mix of different levels that aren't too easy or too difficult. A lot of community-made levels are fun but you will inevitably come across a few stupidly-easy and stupidly-difficult ones, and ones that are just plain stupid period. Fortunately you can bypass a level at any time by holding down the Select button shortly and the challenge will bring up another random level without taking away one of your lives. You can regain lives, up to three at a time per level, by getting 100 coins or 1-Up mushrooms. One downside is that levels don't have checkpoints, if you lose a life you have to start from the beginning of that level. On the Expert challenge mode you will come across some community levels that are punishingly hard "Asshole mario" type levels that will waste through your lives trying to finish them and aren't really fun at all in my opinion. Conversely the Easy challenge features some levels that are mostly too easy and some that are dumb that don't feature any challenge at all. Each time you complete the 100 Mario challenge on any difficulty it unlocks a costume for the SMB1-style mystery mushroom, which lets you play as that character when you get that mushroom (basically acts as Super Mario, just has a different skin), using the Amiibo for that character does the same thing. I appreciate that Nintendo allows people to unlock the Amiibo "DLC" by playing through the game, that's how it should be. You can also search the rankings for levels that are highly rated in the game and for players that have made good levels. If there is a player that has a habit of making levels that you enjoy playing you can follow that player to easily access a list of their uploaded levels. When looking at the detailed thumbnail of a player's level you can see things like a mini-map of their level with red Xs where players have died, the completion rate, and links to their Miiverse post to read/post comments about the level, etc.

Hopefully as the game's repository of uploaded levels matures and the community plays those and (most importantly) stars the really good ones it will weed out the really bad levels. Players can also leave comments via Miiverse about levels and you can see good feedback about a level before even playing it. The good thing about the uploading system is that Nintendo only lets each player upload ten levels at first, and then slowly increases that amount based on stars/likes that they get on their uploaded levels as people play them, forcing people to only upload their very best creations. I believe after 100 total stars on your uploaded levels Nintendo will open it up so you can upload ten additional levels, and so forth. A player can only upload a level if they have completed it them-self, from the beginning starting point with no cheats. The game also limits you to only playing with certain elements at first in the level creator mode and then slowly opens up more of the game objects as you play with the level creator more, trying to guide people slowly into experimenting without getting overwhelmed. It does the same with the art styles, at first you can only use the SMB1 style, later opening NSMBU, and then the SMB3 and SMW styles based on how much you play with and experiment with using the different elements available to you within the level creator. There is a way around that to unlock everything within a couple of hours, mentioned on numerous blogs but I think just letting it go naturally as Nintendo intended is a good way to get familiar with the game and concentrate on good level design instead of just throwing in a bunch of random junk like a lot of noobs have been doing with the game.

The game plays as well on the Wii U Gamepad as it does on a TV and this is the first Wii U game I've played that really has me wishing that the Gamepad had a longer battery life but I'm not about to buy an extended battery for it (yet). You can also play the game with the Pro controller, the Wii Remote, and the Classic Controller. The gameplay kind of matches the feel of the original games but not exactly, for example the wall jump available in NSMBU is only available in the NSMBU art style. However, while you can't pickup shells in the SMB1 style it is modified slightly so you can do the same kind of "stomp and hold down A button to jump really high" move first introduced in SMB3. The other art styles feel pretty accurate to how I remember the original games playing. Certain power-ups are specific to their respective art style, for instance you can only use the Cape Feather in SMW, you can only use the Raccoon suit in SMB3, you can only use Propeller Mario in NSBMU. If you have one of those power-ups in your level and you change the art style the power-up changes to the appropriate one for that art style, or in the case of SMB1 to the mystery mushroom. It's fun making a level in a certain art style and then switching it to another to see how it changes based on the different power-ups available. Sadly the really fun suits from SMB3 such as the Frog, Tanooki, and Hammer suits are not in this game but hopefully Nintendo will add those in a future update. I'm also hoping they'll add the SMB2 and Mario All-Stars art styles to a future update, or maybe DLC, whichever they choose. I know I'm not the only one who would like to see those added to the game. Another thing I'd like to see added to this game is the ability to make slopes/hills and vertical/diagnoal scrolling levels, both could open up a lot of options and make the level creator pretty much flawless.

You will have to take your Wii U online to play the best part of the game, which is sharing your levels and playing those of others. Fortunately it doesn't require you to accept lame EULAs requiring that you sign over your life or give an email address and make separate user accounts to be spammed by advertising like EA games require. Getting the game online is pretty benign, again as it should be. There is a small update required when you first insert the disc into your Wii U before you can start playing and it takes a few minutes but that's just the way consoles are in 2015, it's nowhere near as bad as some PS4 games. It's a good opportunity to thumb through the included booklet on level design tips. Overall I like this game and I think based on how much you liked the old 2D Mario platformers you'll enjoy it, there are enough decent community-made levels to make playing the 100 Mario challenge worthwhile and I've come across some pretty inventive ones like the Kid Icarus one I mentioned previously. For some reason some people love to make insanely difficult levels, I personally think levels with moderate difficulty are the most fun. That's how the Mario platformers were at their best, not too easy but not too hard, accessible enough that most people that had a handle on the gameplay mechanics could finish the levels with practice and felt good when they did. I'm hoping that the insanely challenging "Asshole Mario" levels and levels full of enemies will start to die out as players get more familiar with creating some really great and inventive levels and I hope that the community-made levels only get better as time goes on, we'll see.

So to end a long write-up, I say Super Mario Maker is a definite buy and I hope you have as much fun with it as myself and others in this thread.

For me, games where create things (even as simple as creating your own player in sports games) are not tempting.

But, still, I would like to play SMM just to try out the levels others have made. But I can also see myself getting annoyed with trying to weed out the "good" levels. Mario games have a certain continuity to them that I'm afraid is lacking in this format.

I honestly didn't care a whole heck of a lot about creating Mario levels, but I did want to play other people's creations. This is basically Super Mario Unlimited Levels.

One thing that's sort of a bummer is how 1-up mushrooms are practically useless, and there's no overall goal, like saving the princess. And I do wish that you could use the athletic themes, since the one from Super Mario World is one of my favorite video game songs of all time.

I was very doubtful about this after seeing the trailer at E3, to me it seemed that nintendo was trying to make much money as possible with subpar games related to the most famous franchises but after i saw some gameplays on the internet i totally changed my opinion! This game offers plenty of choices to your creativity and makes me wanto to get a wiiU as soon as possible.